Public Posts Stanwood, WA Stanwood, WA (zoom)

Living on the edge of the World,
a much smaller place today,
as she suffers with an unbearable disease.
What cost for she and they?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why is Phobos so dark? Phobos, the largest and innermost of the two Martian moons, is the darkest moon in the entire Solar System. Its unusual orbit and color indicate that it may be a captured asteroid composed of a mixture of ice and dark rock. The featured assigned-color picture of Phobos near the edge of Mars was captured in late 2021 by ESA's robot spacecraft Mars Express, currently orbiting Mars. Phobos is a heavily cratered and barren moon, with its largest crater located on the far side. From images like this, Phobos has been determined to be covered by perhaps a meter of loose dust. Phobos orbits so close to Mars that from some places it would appear to rise and set twice a day, while from other places it would not be visible at all. Phobos' orbit around Mars is continually decaying -- it will likely break up with pieces crashing to the Martian surface in about 50 million years. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)

Source: The Dhammapada, a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form and one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Admire the beauty but fear the beast. The beauty is the aurora overhead, here taking the form of a great green spiral, seen between picturesque clouds with the bright Moon to the side and stars in the background. The beast is the wave of charged particles that creates the aurora but might, one day, impair civilization. In 1859, following notable auroras seen all across the globe, a pulse of charged particles from a coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with a solar flare impacted Earth's magnetosphere so forcefully that it created the Carrington Event. This assault from the Sun compressed the Earth's magnetic field so violently that it created high currents and sparks along telegraph wires, shocking many telegraph operators. Were a Carrington-class event to impact the Earth today, speculation holds that damage might occur to global power grids and electronics on a scale never yet experienced. The featured aurora was imaged in 2016 over Thingvallavatn Lake in Iceland, a lake that partly fills a fault that divides Earth's large Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. Almost Hyperspace: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Juan Carlos Casado

I am at a loss.
A loss for words.
Yesterday was a good day.
We talked. Best time,
Enjoyable conversation, yet,
a faraway look, in her eyes.

Destroys me. I keep my
emotions in check,
when I want to cry, like now,
hours after I left her.
Went to bed at 10:30, and
awoke at 01:30. It is now
03:00 a.m.

How stupid am I?
It is so difficult for me.
Going to make the
decision for Hospice Care,
with the Drs. permission.

Hospice in my mind, is
the last step. A peaceful exit
from the suffering of my beloved.
God, I hate this.

A muse about waiting to order breakfast when the cloak of
invisibility covers you.

I see you walk by
as you're going away.
Is this another time
when I turn invisible?

I left after waiting 20 minutes,
of being ignored, even when
the wait person was 5 feet away.
No greeting or acknowledgement
that I was present.

My mind is a wasteland,
an empty place,
full of old ideas,
out in space.

Thoughts, bounce around,
without a direction,
turned back by being,
forced into rejection.

Why do I exist?
To serve another,
a woman I have loved,
as my wife and kids Mother.

A few days ago, I spent the afternoon
with my beloved.
My eyes were moist,
my hankie, damp,
from tears, leaking from my eyes,
as I saw my beloved,
in an almost Catatonic state.

Here I sit, awaiting,
alongside of you.
You say, "I don't know you,"
though you make eye contact.

My mind has grown cloudy,
strange thoughts in play.
Another favorite
is going away.

I'll miss you,
your perky smile,
with quick wit,
it's your style.